New World shoots for 5 films in 24 hours

Teams will write, direct, edit and screen all in 1 day

Teams will write, direct, edit and screen all in 1 day

January 20, 2006|JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO Tribune Staff Writer

Daniel Palmer has a plan. "I just got done reading Kafka, so I'd love to do something with the 'The Metamorphosis,' " the fledgling director says. He knows that's a tall order, especially since he will pull dialogue from a hat and be given 24 hours to complete the film. Palmer is one of more than 30 directors, editors, cinematographers and actors participating in New World Arts' 24/5 Film Festival in Goshen. Five filmmaking teams will work collaboratively to create a script, the film and edit each short. They will start at 7 p.m. today and must wrap by 7 p.m. Saturday. The finished projects will then be shown at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. at New World Arts that same night. The teams are given nothing more than a digital video camera, a computer, three props, and three one-sentence sayings. The rest of the production is up to their creativity. "Part of the excitement about these 24-hour festivals is seeing where they will go," New World executive director Eric Kanagy says. "It will be interesting to see how everyone survives it." New World Arts' latest 24-hour experiment follows the success of the company's past three 24/7 theater festivals, where playwrights, directors and actors collaborated on seven stage performances. It could be trickier, however, to apply that concept to film. "You can have a cardboard box as a table in a theater and people would accept that," Palmer says. "It's not the same on film. You have to be more literal." Most of the filming will take place in and around Goshen early Saturday morning. In the afternoon, the film crews will return to New World Arts, where editing stations will be set up throughout the building. "We're just not quite sure how it's going to turn out," Kanagy says. "Under pressure you can either produce something brilliant or crap. It's that creativity crammed into such a short time that makes it interesting." Palmer agrees, even if his "Metamorphosis" adaptation may give way to something he never planned on. "When you go into any creative process, you go in with a fear of what it's going to look like," Palmer says. "Here, you have to use what's around you. That's what will end up in the film. You just don't have time to think about what should be in the film." Like a giant cockroach.